A straitjacket used by Harry Houdini in his act, display at the Houdini Museum

Leave it to legendary magician Harry Houdini to make a museum suddenly appear in a midtown magic shop 86 years after his death.

The Houdini Museum of New York opens Tuesday in the Fantasma Magic Shop across from Penn Station, boasting more than 200 items, including the magician’s metamorphosis trunk.

Also on display are Houdini’s performance table, a massive selection of handcuffs and promotional posters and even the bust from his Machpelah Cemetery gravestone in Queens.

Curator Roger Dreyer, head of Fantasma Toys Inc., spent two decades and millions of dollars amassing the second-largest Houdini collection in the world, behind only magician David Copperfield’s. But Dreyer had nowhere to display his prized items.

After much of his collection was used in a 2010 exhibit at the Jewish Museum on Fifth Ave., Dreyer decided to turn the front of his magic store into New York’s first Houdini museum.

A straitjacket used by Harry Houdini in his act, display at the Houdini Museum

(Jeff Bachner for New York Daily News)

“Magic builds self-confidence, improves hand-eye coordination and public speaking, and creates social interaction,” says Dreyer, 50, while walking through the one-room space. “I saw how beautiful magic was and wanted to open a museum that would allow me to share my passion with the world’s greatest vaudeville entertainer of all time.”

Dreyer enlisted the help of architect and designer David Rockwell, one of the producers of an upcoming musical about Houdini that’s set to open next year and star Hugh Jackman. Rockwell picked a lush red wallpaper and glittering floor design that gives the museum a truly otherworldly feel.

“Magic has always been a fascination of mine,” says Rockwell. “I’ve always been interested in the turn-of-the-20th-century visual imagery.”

Born Ehrich Weisz in Budapest, Houdini moved to America in 1878 as a 4-year-old. His magic career began in the early 1890s when he would perform at Coney Island.

A straitjacket used by Harry Houdini in his act, display at the Houdini Museum

(AP)

Soon he was pulling off his legendary escape acts in front of thousands across America and Europe. Upon his death from a ruptured appendix in 1926, Houdini was one of the best-known performers in the world.

Dreyer, a Long Island native, believes that everyone, even those who don’t care for magic, can relate to Houdini’s story.

“Here was a man who was a 5-foot-4 immigrant with an accent, but he was incredibly successful,” says Dreyer. “He would say, ‘My brain was the key that set me free.’ So we want this museum to teach kids that if you put your mind toward something, if you study and think hard, you too can be successful at whatever you want to do.”

Especially if what you want to do is escape from a Chinese water torture cell while being handcuffed and suspended upside down by a giant green monster, as one poster on the wall at the Houdini museum shows.

A straitjacket used by Harry Houdini in his act, display at the Houdini Museum

(Jeff Bachner for New York Daily News)

“It is a totally captivating exhibit,” says escape artist Thomas Solomon, looking over the display. “It does a good job of painting a picture of how amazing Houdini was at his craft. In my mind, I am matching the tools that he used to the tools that I use, and that is fascinating.”

But when the doors to the museum open, Dreyer doesn’t expect future escape artists to be his most frequent visitors. Instead, he’s counting on New York’s Finest.

“A lot of our visitors will be New York City police officers,” says Dreyer. “It makes sense; they work with handcuffs all the time.”

josterhout@nydailynews.com

YOU SHOULD KNOW

The Houdini Museum of New York at the Fantasma Magic Store (421 Seventh Ave., Third Floor). Admission is free; (212) 244-3633. Open 11 a.m. - 6 p.m.